Whiskeymen

Reprinted by permission of Charles Cowdery
Copyright © 1996, Charles Kendrick Cowdery,
All Rights Reserved.

Here are short biographies of some of the founders of the Kentucky and Tennessee whiskey industries.

Jim Beam

Colonel James Beauregard Beam was born in 1864. The Civil War was raging not far away. He died in 1947, the year of the first televised presidential address. His father, David M. Beam, was a third generation Kentucky distiller. James B. made it four generations when he joined the family business in 1882. A few years later, after David M. retired, Jim Beam and Albert J. Hart (his sister's husband), built a new distillery to take advantage of a new railroad line. At the same time, about two miles down the track, R. B. Hayden was building the original Old Grand-Dad distillery. The Beam & Hart Distillery was famous for a brand they called "Old Tub" whiskey. Jim Beam reopened the plant in 1933, after Prohibition, with new partners. He was 70 years old. The descendants of Jim Beam, and of his brother Park and uncle Joe, have made whiskey for dozens of different Kentucky distilleries, including the ones that carry Jim Beam's name today.

Elijah Craig

The durable claim that Elijah Craig, a Baptist minister, made the first Bourbon Whiskey can be traced to Richard Collins, whose History of Kentucky was published in 1874. Collins doesn't identify Craig by name, but writes that "the first Bourbon Whiskey was made in 1789, at Georgetown, at the fulling mill at the Royal spring." This statement is on a densely-packed page of assorted Kentucky "firsts." Collins doesn't substantiate his claim nor is there any other evidence to support it. Craig was a real person and he was a distiller, there is just no evidence that his whiskey was unique in its day. Reverend Craig, however, was a unique individual. He and his congregation were chased out of Virginia for religious reasons so he established Lebanon Town, in Kentucky, in 1786. In 1787, Craig founded a school that is now Kentucky's Georgetown College. In 1789, he established Kentucky's first fulling mill (for making cloth). A year later, the name of Lebanon Town was changed to Georgetown to honor George Washington. In 1793, Craig opened Kentucky's first paper plant. In 1795, he started a shipping business on the Kentucky River. On September 26, 1798, he was found guilty of making whiskey without a license (so were 177 of his neighbors) and fined $140. Was Elijah Craig Kentucky's first Bourbon-maker? Maybe not. Was he Kentucky's first big time entrepreneur? Absolutely!

George A. Dickel

George A. Dickel was born in Darmstadt, Germany, about 1818. Around 1853 he came to Tennessee and established a wholesale whiskey business in Nashville. In 1866, he opened a retail liquor store. In 1888, George A. Dickel and Co. acquired the sole rights to bottle and distribute all of the whiskey produced by the Cascade Distillery, which had been established in 1877 in Coffee County, and was then two-thirds owned by Dickel's partner and brother-in-law, Victor Shwab. Also in 1888, Dickel, who was then a 70-year-old man in failing health, fell off his horse and was injured, forcing his retirement. He died six years later.

Jack Daniel

Jasper Newton "Jack" Daniel was born on September 5, 1846. A farmer named Dan Call introduced him to whiskey-making while Jack was still a boy. He eventually bought Call's still and moved it to Cave Spring, near Lynchburg, Tennessee. Jack Daniel understood that if his customers remembered him, they would remember his whiskey too, so he cultivated a distinctive image for himself. He always wore a knee-length frock coat and a planter's hat, and grew an elaborate mustache and goatee. Jack Daniel was active in the whiskey business from the Civil War until his death in 1911. He never married and had no children so his sister's boy, Lem Motlow, inherited the business.

Dr. James C. Crow

James C. Crow was a physician and chemist, born in Scotland in 1789 and educated there. He came to Kentucky about 1825. His training made him a successful distiller because he understood more about sanitation and about the biochemistry of fermentation than his contemporaries. Oscar Pepper hired Crow as his master distiller and their whiskey became a big hit with big shots like Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, John Calhoun, Ulysses S. Grant, William Henry Harrison and Daniel Webster. Crow died suddenly, at work, in 1856. He was 67 and left no heirs. After Oscar Pepper's death, his son sold the remaining Crow-made whiskey to E. H. Taylor, who eventually built the Old Crow Distillery where Old Crow Bourbon was made until 1985.

Evan Williams

Heaven Hill, which makes Evan Williams Bourbon today, claims he was Kentucky's "first commercial distiller." Evan Williams did establish a distillery in Louisville in 1783, just four years after the little settlement by the Falls of the Ohio was laid out and named. A few years later, he was indicted for making whiskey without a license, an offense that didn't prevent his neighbors from electing him to the town's first elected Board of Trustees in 1797. The new Board's rules included the requirement that any "ardent or spirituous liquors" brought to Board meetings would be forfeited "for the use of the board after adjournment." It was said that Williams always arrived for the meetings with a full jug and always left with an empty one. He also held the important post of Harbor Master for the young river town. Williams' distillery was still in operation in 1802, when his neighbors had it declared a nuisance for polluting a stream with distillery slop. He died on October 15, 1810.

The Pepper Family

James E. Pepper was the last in a long line of distillers. His grandfather was Elijah Pepper, born in Virginia and an early Kentucky settler. His father was Oscar Pepper, who had the good sense to employ Dr. James C. Crow as his master distiller, bringing fame to the Old Crow and Old Pepper brands, and fortune to the Pepper family. After Oscar's death in 1867, James ran the Versailles distillery for a few years before selling it to E. H. Taylor. James then moved to New York, but returned in 1879 to build a new distillery in Lexington. One of the unique features of the site was a seemingly inexhaustible spring. The distillery's pumps drew water from it at a rate of 700 gallons a minute and it never went dry. James put his name on the label of his bourbon and used the famous slogan "Born With The Republic" along with the trademark "Old 1776." James died in 1908 and the family sold the distillery and brands. James E. Pepper Bourbon was brought back after Prohibition but discontinued in 1960. United Distillers re-established it 1994 but only sells it outside the USA.

Edmund Haynes Taylor

Colonel Edmund Haynes Taylor, Jr. was descended from two U. S. presidents, James Madison and Zachary Taylor. He was born in 1830. A banker by profession he became, by the end of the century, the master financier of the Kentucky Bourbon industry. Colonel Taylor built or bought many distilleries in and around Frankfort, the state capitol, including the Old Oscar Pepper Distillery (where Dr. James C. Crow developed the sour mash process), the Old Crow Distillery, the O. F. C. Distillery (now Ancient Age), Hermitage Distillery, Carlisle Distillery and, finally, The Old Taylor Distillery, where Old Taylor Bourbon was made until 1972. A politician too, Taylor was mayor of Frankfort for 16 years. He lobbied hard in the state government and in Washington for distilling interests and helped pass the Bottled in Bond Act of 1897. Taylor was 92 when he died in 1922.

William LaRue Weller

William LaRue Weller established a wholesale whiskey business in Louisville in 1849. His offices were on "Whiskey Row," a stretch of Main Street several blocks long near the Ohio River. Many "Whiskey Row" offices had warehouses behind them that led to the wharves and the paddlewheel steamboats that carried the whiskey to markets up and down the Ohio River. Despite this commercial connection with both North and South, all three of William's sons fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. When Weller died in 1908, the company was bought by two of his young salesmen, one of whom was Julian P. Van Winkle, then age 33. During Prohibition, Van Winkle merged the Weller company with one of its main suppliers, Louisville's Stitzel Brothers Distillery. Van Winkle ran Stitzel-Weller until his death in 1965.

The Wathen Family

John Bernard Wathen ran his family's distillery from 1863 until a few years before his death in 1919. He died just months before Prohibition went into effect. J.B. Wathen's grandfather came to Kentucky from Maryland in 1787. Like most of his neighbors, Henry Hudson Wathen was a farmer/distiller. It wasn't until the Civil War that whiskey-making became a major commercial venture, and J.B. Wathen and his brothers were among the most successful. In 1875, J.B. and his younger brother Nick built a large distillery in Lebanon, Kentucky. In 1899, they bought the Old Grand-Dad distillery and placed their younger brother Nace in charge. Three of J.B.'s sons were also active in the whiskey business. The company they formed during Prohibition to consolidate existing whiskey stocks was called American Medicinal Spirits. It later became a cornerstone of National Distillers. The last of the "Whiskey Wathens" active in the business was J.B.'s son, Richard, who became an executive with National after Repeal.